New hearing for ban on guns at Alameda fairgrounds

ALAMEDA FAIRGROUNDS

A federal appeals court will reconsider its ruling that set a tough hurdle for gun show promoters who seek to overturn the ban on firearms at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.

Ruling in a case that dates from 1999, a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared in May that advocates of returning guns to the fairgrounds in Pleasanton would have to show that the ban enacted by the county imposes a "substantial burden" on the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

Lawyers for the promoters argued that the constitutional right to possess guns for self-defense includes the right to buy and sell them in public places.

On Monday, the court said a majority of its judges had voted to refer the case to an 11-judge panel for a new hearing, at a date not yet scheduled.

County supervisors outlawed guns on all county property, including the fairgrounds, a year after a melee at the fair in 1998 in which shots were fired and 16 people were injured.

A lawsuit challenging the ban gained new life in 2009 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Constitution's Second Amendment gives people a right to keep guns in the home for self-defense.

The court also said the government could prohibit guns in "sensitive places." A three-judge appeals court panel said in May that the Alameda County ordinance appeared to be valid under that standard and did not make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain guns in the county. But the court said the plaintiffs could try to persuade a federal judge that the fairgrounds ban unreasonably interferes with gun possession.

Donald Kilmer, a lawyer for the gun show sponsors, said he would argue at the new hearing that the panel's standard is too demanding and that a prohibition on guns at the fairgrounds violates both the right of self-defense and freedom of expression.

In court papers, Kilmer said federal judges should follow an 1871 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that declared "the right to keep and bear arms necessarily involves the right to purchase them."

Attorneys for the county argued that a law banning guns at commercial sales events on public property has no effect on the right to possess guns for self-defense. Even if the purchase of firearms is a constitutionally protected right, said Sayre Weaver, a lawyer for Alameda County, "there are lots of other dealers, in the county and nearby."